Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Everybody's News

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  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to nzlemming,

    UC/lc Anonymous...

    a type nerd

    My name is Ian, I too am a type nerd.
    One time I ordered a book on type use that sounded really interesting , and was aghast to see the whole thing had been set in a tacky script font, talk about not putting their 'knowledge' on display...

    Anyone out there collect typesetters font books?
    I have a whole shelf of them that need a good home...

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Marcus Turner, in reply to Rich Lock,

    Fair enough.

    This has always appealed to me:

    Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.
    ~ James Fallows

    Since Nov 2006 • 212 posts Report Reply

  • Carol Stewart, in reply to Crystal Dotson,

    Everyone in the United States who were old enough will remember where they were at the time they heard the news.

    That goes for our country too, Crystal.
    It was early in the morning here - 5 am? - when the news broke. My partner, who was away travelling for work, phoned and suggested I turn on the TV. Like most people I was transfixed for the rest of the day. I remember letting my two year old sleep as long as possible.

    Wellington • Since Jul 2008 • 830 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic, in reply to Ross Mason,

    I am just sad that some folk decided to do it. But if you feel you are a patriot to your homeland that had been "invaded and/or influenced" (Saudi Arabia) by another (USA) then no bounds to your actions need necessarily be applied.

    Agreed. It's all too commonly forgotten that the 9/11 hijackers were made up of the following: 15x Saudis, 2x Emiratis, 1x Egyptian, 1x Lebanese.

    Spot the Iraqi.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Carol Stewart,

    A good 9/11 retrospective from the Guardian here

    Wellington • Since Jul 2008 • 830 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Just to update the original post:

    We will now also be joined by erstwhile NZDF chief former Air Marshall Sir Bruce Ferguson, who will respond to the claims in the book.

    Then we'll get them all together to talk further for a Media7 online-only extra.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie,

    Thanks Ross & Ian for the posts re. 'controlled demolition'.
    Perhaps it's a positive indicator that these things can be discussed without being accused of violating the memory of the victims.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Ross Mason,

    Truthiness:

    Just in case there are more truthers out there who think NASA did not go to the moon. Here is some good evidence that they did get there and hit those two golfballs!!

    Footprints from the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter. But then, NASA would doctor some tracks in the sand wouldn't they.

    Upper Hutt • Since Jun 2007 • 1590 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock, in reply to Ross Mason,

    Pfft, I'm really surprised NASA expects us to fall for that bad photochop.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • Rich of Observationz,

    These wild conspiracy theories do rather detract from some fairly demonstrable facts about the runup to the attacks.

    The US government was pretty happy with Islamic fundamentalism in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, in corrupt client states (primarily Saudi) and where the fundamentalists formed a geopolitical buffer (Pakistan).

    Several of the Bin Laden family were facilitated to flee the country on the only non-military flight allowed in the skies after the attacks. Pakistan remains in a wierd ally/enemy limbo (and if terrorists ever get nukes, the ISI will have been involved). And Saudi, from whence most of the money came, is still a special friend - their sloshing of ample bribe money around, some of which goes to western politicians, can't but help.

    That's all very fully documented - isn't it a big enough indictment without making up stories about controlled demolitions?

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    And what the attacks revealed about who was actually running the US govt was instructive. Who was sent to the bunker and who was reading goat stories, for instance.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie, in reply to Rich of Observationz,

    That's all very fully documented -

    And not a mention of Israel.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to Joe Wylie,

    A Fisk full of dollars...

    That’s all very fully documented -
    - And not a mention of Israel.

    In a room full of elephants would
    anyone bother to mention the human?

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • nzlemming, in reply to Joe Wylie,

    Gods, I love reading Fisk! Who else would use "spavined" in his opening paragraph and still make you read to the end?

    Waikanae • Since Nov 2006 • 2937 posts Report Reply

  • George Darroch,

    Since we’re on the nostalgia trip, Toy Judt, 2006, on the failure of ‘liberal’ America.

    Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran?

    WLG • Since Nov 2006 • 2264 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg, in reply to George Darroch,

    Or Bill Keller's rampant dishonesty in the NYT today:

    But knowing as we now do the exaggeration of Hussein’s threat, the cost in Iraqi and American lives and the fact that none of this great splurge has bought us confidence in Iraq’s future or advanced the cause of freedom elsewhere — I think Operation Iraqi Freedom was a monumental blunder.

    Neatly pulled apart by Greg Mitchell here.*

    *h/t Toby

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Angus Robertson, in reply to Rich of Observationz,

    +1

    Auckland • Since May 2007 • 984 posts Report Reply

  • Angus Robertson,

    In a room full of elephants would
    anyone bother to mention the human?

    Everybody mentions the Israel/Palestine conflict. All the time. Its the most popular war. Doesn't make it relevent.

    Auckland • Since May 2007 • 984 posts Report Reply

  • Rich Lock, in reply to Simon Grigg,

    Literally millions of people around the world were able to see through the 'evidence' and pretexts for war which they were presented with. Sometimes it was laughably easy to tear apart the arguments, such as with Colin Powell and his inaccurate and plagarised presentation (not that tearing them apart made any difference).

    I'd dearly love to ask Bill Keller why, as a highly-paid, highly trained and experienced media expert, he wasn't able to this, when these millions of amateur citizens were able to so without really breaking a sweat.

    back in the mother countr… • Since Feb 2007 • 2728 posts Report Reply

  • Andrew E, in reply to Rich Lock,

    I'd dearly love to ask Bill Keller why, as a highly-paid, highly trained and experienced media expert, he wasn't able to this, when these millions of amateur citizens were able to so without really breaking a sweat.

    I remember going to speech by Noam Chomsky in London in the mid-1990s. Someone asked him how it was that a country with some good universities and no apparent paucity of intelligent people to advise senior members of the executive could still keep screwing up foreign policy so badly. Chomsky's reply was along the lines of 'you have to be very highly educated to be that stupid'.

    cf his view on 'education':

    Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call "education," they're going to take control -- "they" being what Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast," namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.
    Class Warfare, 1995

    174.77 x 41.28 • Since Sep 2008 • 200 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg, in reply to Rich Lock,

    Sometimes it was laughably easy to tear apart the arguments, such as with Colin Powell and his inaccurate and plagarised presentation (not that tearing them apart made any difference).

    The 'mobile chemical weapons trailers' that he made such a fuss over were, just months earlier, documented in The Independent as having been supplied by Thatcher as weather stations in the 1980s. They were made in Cambridge and the plans were publicly available. Really, it was as easy as reading a bloody newspaper sometimes. They didn't bother.

    I'm always bemused at the inanity of the argument that most of the Washington elite, elected and otherwise, were convinced by the 'evidence'. All it says is that these people either chose to ignore the evidence - for a variety reasons, mostly agenda serving - or were just far more gullible and less inquisitive than people have a right to expect them to be.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • DexterX, in reply to Marcus Turner,

    Yes...................it's all about image enchancement, isn't it.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1224 posts Report Reply

  • tussock,

    making up stories about controlled demolitions?

    "The great masses will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one"? Makes it hard to talk about the cost-cutting during construction?

    But really, there's so much bullshit out there that it takes a bit of serious research to even find the basics of any major event now.

    "The US did have plans to invade Afghanistan before 9/11", along with plans to invade all sorts of other countries, as they do today.

    "FBI men are pulled off the trail of future hijackers", and off and onto a lot of other people too. The standard tactics of getting stupid people to say something criminal didn't work (as these were actual terrorists), no convictions possible means no further investigation.

    "Places hijackers train are affiliated with the CIA", as is a huge amount of the US. The CIA is absolutely fucking enormous. US$90 billion dollar per annum enterprise.

    "On the day, NORAD was running a training exercise about commercial airliners being hijacked and crashed into buildings, including the WTC", as it had been the target of two previous terrorist attacks and lots of local and international spy agencies had just recently warned them about the airliner threat and they knew they had no response ready.

    "The terrorists left an orgy of evidence about their identities and motives", because they weren't planning on being able to tell anyone why they'd done it afterward, and it was totally political in nature (specifically, the endless suffering in Palestine directly funded and armed by the USA).

    "George W. Bush is a fucking idiot", who happens to make all his friends incredibly rich by getting to be president and handing them hundreds of millions of dollars in public money to basically do nothing at all.

    "The republicans are insane", but they get elected, dish out big money like candy to their "campaign contributors", pass laws that make those same companies even richer, and retire as multi-millionaires off a rather small wage. Just like the democrats do.

    "Dick Cheney stopped flying on commercial airlines before 9/11", because he and GWB were incredibly unpopular at the time, to the point of his security finding it very difficult to operate in public.

    Cynical manipulation of the public mood to bla bla bla, yes, they did. If you're not being cynically manipulated by your government, they've probably resorted to shooting at you instead. We are ruled over, for reals.

    But yeh, they had to bomb someone (bread and circuses, stories of villains and heroes), so they picked on an unpopular nation who couldn't fight back, and when that was all too easy they picked on someone harder. The campaign contributors are on the pigs back during wartime, so expect it to end when they finally have to start shooting kids to maintain the peace at home, as it was for Vietnam.

    Since Nov 2006 • 611 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    “Dick Cheney stopped flying on commercial airlines before 9/11”, because he and GWB were incredibly unpopular at the time, to the point of his security finding it very difficult to operate in public.

    When was the last time that the VP ever flew on commercial airlines, apart from a publicity stunt? There's a couple of helicopters and some planes available for his use provided by the military.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle, in reply to tussock,

    because he and GWB were incredibly unpopular at the time

    I thought Cheney was pretty much under the radar and Bush was the butt of lots of jokes (remember how he nearly choked to death on a pretzel while watching football? Good times) in that first six months in office. But perhaps I am misremembering. Or misunderestimating, to quote the man himself.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

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